Very little is known about energy used in rural areas. Impressions exist that rural energy needs lead to deforestation. As a first step to understand rural energy problems, ASTRA of IISc conducted a detailed survey in six villages in Kunigal Taluk (Tumkur District) in Karnataka - based on observations, discussions, measurements and checks. Some of the findings are listed below;

i) Firewood is a dominant energy source (81.6%). This is used mainly for household activities. The surprising finding was that 71% of the households depend on gathering firewood, and 48% of firewood used is gathered from the neighbourhood consisting of twigs and small branches only. About 19% of firewood came from one's own land leaving about 33% to be purchased. Hence gathered firewood does not tribute to deforestation. Supporting evidence to this comes from the fact that gathering is done mostly by children and women;

ii) Cooking activity is a major one consuming human and fire wood energy. Efficiencies of choolas are in the range of 5.08%. Hence it is desirable to study improvements in the design of choolas;

iii) Human energy (especially women and children) was inefficiently used in firewood gathering (2.6 hrs/day/hh), cooking (3.68 hrs/day/hh), carrying food to farms (1.82 hrs/day/hh), fetching water (1.53 hrs/day/hh), taking cattle for grazing (5.54 hrs/day/hh) etc. The share of domestic burden between men, women and children is 24%: 56%: 20%;

iv) Kerosene consumption for lighting is about 4.3 litres/un-electrified house, 78% of the houses being un-electrified;

v) Industrial consumption is very small.

The sourcewise and sectorwise energy consumptions are given in Table 5.